My internship experience had two phases, one week of training that resulted in the design of an internal product for HR and Ethos Employees to demonstrate our ability was satisfactory to contribute within the teams.

From then on, the rest of my time at the company was focused on improving the efficiency of selling cars by designing a heliocentric platform for all customer-facing applications of Ethos Group to be accessible from.

The design process included:
1. Conducting multiple rounds of UX research to define the parameters of the project
2. Creating wireframes to communicate broad design explorations
3. Working cross-collaboratively and gaining stakeholder alignment
4. Work with engineers to discuss technical challenges and creating high-fidelity prototypes to meet those parameters
5. Presenting at each stage of the process to multiple product managers and establish a long-term project roadmap.
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While I am unable to showcase what I spent the majority of my internship working on due to the sensitivity of the information. I am able to present the internal project the interns completed together. The result of the project was a set of high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes demonstrating an end-to-end product experience designed to facilitate company interaction as the company transitioned to remote work due to the pandemic. When designing the project we had to keep in design for two sets of user needs: the employee and the HR coordinator.

Below is a preview of the designs for the myHR project!
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I took away so many unique experiences during my internship in Dallas, that helped facilitate my growth not just as a designer but as a person. Written below are just a few of the learnings that I've taken with me:

1. Embrace feeling uncomfortable. During my time at Ethos Group there were a lot of times where I feel like I couldn't keep up with the content of meetings, or vocabulary went right over my head. It's important to embrace the beginner's mindset and consume knowledge from anything and anyone. People tend to love helping others and only by absorbing all the information that is expected to be known can you even reach the start line.

2. Be Bold. It's ok to make mistakes, but everyone has a unique perspective to add to the conversation. Never hesitate to contribute something, and people will take notice of your effort.

3. Designers have to fight for the user. My work led me to better understand the unique challenges dealership representatives face (e.g. reps have to utilize multiple products depending on the customer's requirements), and how these manifest in necessary design decisions (e.g. interface learnability). Learning how to advocate the importance of addressing these needs in the context for a company's benefit was a vital skill.
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